Transgressions of the Mind
by Mai1
Summary: Jack's lover muses about their relationship


Title: Transgressions of the Mind  
  
Author: Mai  
  
E-mail: Maisfeeka@AOL.com  
  
Website URL: N/A  
  
Feedback: Feedback is always lovely  
  
Distribution: Credit Dauphine - written for the May 2002 Fanfic Challenge. Feel free to archive anywhere, just please let me know where  
  
Disclaimer: Alias is owned by ABC, J.J. Abrams, Bad Robot Productions and all those other wonderful people. I do not own Jack Bristow, although I enjoy borrowing him from time to time. Ree belongs to me. No copyright violation is intended and no money is being made off of this piece.  
  
Summary: Jack's lover muses about their relationship  
  
Rating: PG-13.  
  
Classification: Angst, AU - or maybe not. After all, who knows what Jack does when he's not at work?  
  
*************************  
  
Transgressions of the Mind  
  
I sit alone.  
  
Quiet.  
  
The room is lit by a single candle making shadows on the wall.  
  
I let the darkness wrap around me as I curl up on the couch and watch the candle flicker. And think about my life.  
  
And how I got here.  
  
Funny sort of way to spend your birthday.  
  
He's not here with me. Won't be here. Not tonight anyway.  
  
I don't know where he is. London? Paris? He could be anywhere. Hell, for all I know he's in Memphis visiting Graceland.  
  
Right.  
  
Jack Bristow at Graceland. I can see it now. He'd take one look, do that sort of haughty sniff and say, "Excess, Mr. Presley…was it all about excess?"  
  
No, he would never go there. He'd never do anything so frivolous.  
  
Frivolous. Jack Bristow. Nope. Can't even think about them properly in conjunction with each other.  
  
No, I know he's doing something important. I only worked in intelligence for a few years, but it was long enough to teach me to look beyond the surface of things. I know he works for one of the agencies, know he's doing something undercover for them. Maybe infiltrating another group?  
  
I don't know… Not exactly.  
  
But enough to know I can never ask him. Never speculate aloud on what I know or even on what I merely postulate. The stakes are very high. I don't need anyone to tell me that.  
  
But it doesn't stop me from wondering. And worrying.  
  
Like tonight. I know he's out there doing … something - something dangerous - and I know his collarbone hasn't healed properly yet. He was in so much pain the last time he was here, just a few days ago. Not that he'd admit it, of course. At least not the full extent of the pain. Whoever came up with the word stoic must have had Jack in mind.  
  
But I worry that he'll re-injure it. Or injure something else. Or be killed.  
  
No. I'm not going to go there. Not tonight. Not again. Too many nights I've sat here and thought about that. Sat alone here in the dark and wondered if I would ever see him alive again. And if anyone would know to contact me and let me know he was dead. Or if I'd just sit here, day after day, night after night, not knowing.  
  
All right. Enough.  
  
But my mind keeps going over it. Worrying about it.  
  
I don't know how he broke his collarbone - cracked it, he said, but the difference is negligible. I didn't, couldn't, ask him what had happened. He would have just had to lie to me anyway and we both try hard not to go there. I know what he is and what he does - enough to get by at least - and he knows that I know. And we have both, without ever having said a word about it, agreed to let it be. To leave it out of our relationship as much as we possibly can. As if by ignoring it we can make it go away.  
  
Our relationship.  
  
I am involved with a man that I love beyond all reason, all sanity.  
  
When he's here, there are times when I just curl up with him on the couch. The way I'm pretending to now, if truth be known. He sits, silently, lost in his own thoughts, and I curl up and rest my head on his chest. Wrap my arms around him. I close my eyes and listen to his heartbeat and he strokes my hair. We can stay that way for hours. Me dreaming of him. He lost in his own thoughts.  
  
And then he'll turn to me and we fall into passion. Sometimes wild and out of control. Sometimes so achingly gentle and tender that I can hardly breathe with the beauty of it.  
  
When I sleep in his arms all of my dreams are good.  
  
I am involved with a man that I love beyond all reason and all sanity.  
  
And yet we will never marry.  
  
I will never bear his child.  
  
I will never meet his friends or sit and chat with him about work or know where he goes when he calls to tell me something's "come up".  
  
So many nevers.  
  
My friends tease me about my secret lover and I just smile. Half of them think he doesn't really exist. The other half want to know what he's hiding. They think maybe he's married.  
  
If only they knew.  
  
But I like keeping him to myself. I like that it's just the two of us, hidden away in my house. I like that he'll smile with me, even laugh sometimes, when we're together. That he can let his guard down with me and only me. It somehow makes what we have even more special, that it can't be shared.  
  
At least that's what I tell myself in those dark moments when he's away.  
  
God.  
  
I sound like I'm his mistress.  
  
Jack's mistress.  
  
The very thought of that turns my stomach.  
  
I've always looked down at women who were someone's mistress - wondered how they could possibly be willing to settle for something like that. Sitting home by the phone, waiting for the times their lover was free to join them, knowing they can never have all of him, always hoping for more…  
  
And now to think that my relationship with Jack could be perceived that way…  
  
But it's different. He cares deeply for me. Loves me, I believe, at least as much as he will ever allow himself to love anyone. Except his daughter, Sydney, of course.  
  
He lives behind such high walls and yet he is so vulnerable.  
  
My heart is so full. Knowing that he allows me, trusts me enough, to let me see that side of him - to share it with me.  
  
What little of his heart he can share he entrusts to me.  
  
That makes it different, doesn't it?  
  
It has to.  
  
I don't know why I let my mind stray this way, don't know why I torture myself like this. It doesn't change anything. I wouldn't give him - this - up even if I could.  
  
God.  
  
Sometimes the truth hurts.  
  
If it is the truth…  
  
Damn.  
  
Hell of a way to spend a birthday.  
  
***********************  
  
"I think I'll blow this damn candle out. I don't want nobody coming over to my table, I got nothing to talk to anybody about."  
  
~ Joni Mitchell 


End file.
